Microsoft Wants Clear Cloud Computing Legal Framework

Microsoft Corp. appears to be concerned with privacy and security issues in the cloud computing domain so much that it wants the US Government to step in to formulate rules for governing the same.

Brad Smith, the software giant’s General Counsel, called on the US Congress to intervene to put in place a new “Cloud Computing Advancement Act”, which would lay out clear rules and policies to ensure privacy and safety in the cloud computing sphere.

In a keynote speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, Smith said that such “truth-in-cloud-computing” principles wouldn’t only help protecting cloud computing consumers, but would also play an important role in boosting up the market.

Pressing the need of such a legal framework, Smith said: “We need government to modernize the laws, adapt them to the cloud, and adopt new measures to protect privacy and promote security”.

“There is no doubt that the future holds even more opportunities than the present, but it also contains critical challenges that we must address”, he added

In a bid to support his proposals, Smith quoted results of the Microsoft’s latest survey, which claimed that a majority of businesses were although excited about exploring the avenues in cloud computing, but they were concerned about the security and privacy factors.

Our Comments

Interesting initiative from Microsoft which shows that the company is really looking forward to embracing cloud computing, if there was any doubt left. We're certainly convince that others might back Microsoft's attempt to clear out any legal issues that might arise as Cloud computing becomes more popular.